Laura Gamache

On Writing the Eeva Kilpi Poems

When my husband Jim went through surgery, chemo and radiation treatment for Stage III squamous cell carcinoma metastasized from his left tonsil to his lymph nodes, we listened hard to try to understand medical terminology, as though learning that language could save his life.

In my stash of transliteration resources for poetry workshops I have the book, Min Kärleks Höga Visa, by a Scandinavian poet named Eeva Kilpi. I don't comprehend whatever language the poems are written in, but her work is very important to me. By focusing on each word sound in an Eeva Kilpi poem, I constructed my own poem in English. This process allowed me to focus away from what Jim and I were going through, which gave me an opening to write about it. This attempting to make meaning from what I did not understand was very like going through the process of cancer treatment, where comprehension and outcome were highly limited, but still there.

Hard reckoning has found us.
We dine on rancor,
that minor furor.Amen.

TECHNICIANS BOLT HIS RADIATION MASK TO THE TABLE

Trapped head hand sign:
you fasten that by the jugular,
force one slack spring till that icon hooks there,
lines up back of his head,
hurt plucked out by handfuls.
Smile for will, Daddy, you're covered
in your hand-held helmet.

Batter up till you're it.
We adjust magnets fast for sick times,
make fog or suffer,
new gaiety is up to us,
off-hand, far from sinking.

WRATH LATHER

For never-ending horning-in,
for further biographying,
some hurts part hair off heads,
broke-down ticking bombs.

Men at jobs bypass fabric, old women sit hemming outside.
Matter has plastic cards. Quiver for an earning.
Pucker your gigs. Those men in Hades sacrificed, sat sins,
wandered home to hotels, befuddled, sighed like angels.